There isn’t much hiding the fact that cigarette smoking isn’t a healthy lifestyle choice. Life insurance underwriters treat smoking the way they do for very solid reasons. It causes cancer. Cancers it doesn’t cause, it makes worse. It’s linked to heart disease.
Now a massive study that involved 1.2 million people shows that people who smoke are 44% more likely to develop type 2 diabetes. And the more you smoke, the better the chance of developing diabetes. People that smoked more than 20 cigarettes a day were 61% more likely.
While researchers stopped short of saying that smoking causes diabetes, two lines of thought came from the study. One is that smoking may be more common in those who have a lifestyle that would lead toward diabetes. Obesity and a sedentary lifestyle are noted risk factors.
The other is an older study that showed a link between smoking and insulin resistance.
Bottom line. From a life insurance standpoint, diabetes or not, smoking is going to double or triple your life insurance premiums. Hellooo!! These underwriters aren’t just mean. They know something that, deep down, most people who smoke know just as well.
December 14th, 2007
It is a rare thing in the life insurance industry when there is only one company that takes a stance completely contrary to all of the other companies. Prudential is just that bold.
For as long as there has been life insurance and cigarettes, there has been testing to determine if you have nicotine in your system. Virtually all companies assume nicotine in your system meets the underwriting threshhold for smoker rates. They bulk all nicotine use, whether it is cigarette, cigar, chew, or nicorette gum into the same rate class even though the risk factors are obviously not the same.
Prudential was one of only two companies that took exception to that line of underwriting lack of thinking. They knew that the mortality risk is not the same for a cigar smoker or someone who chews, as it is for a cigarette smoker. The other company was bought up and thrown in the trash by AXA Equitable, so 50% of the common sense in the life insurance business left us last year. That was bad news.
The good news is that it doesn’t appear that Prudential is prone to being gobbled up by some other company and they seem very solid in their stance on this issue.
There are very few companies that will break away from conventional underwriting, but Pru, the Rock, seems to do it consistently. They have the best underwriting when it comes to sleep apnea, mood disorders including bipolar disorder, prostate cancer, student pilots and……..cigars.
Bottom line. As all the other companies languish in mediocrity, Pru stays on the cutting edge. I believe they are one of the only companies that cares about underwriting reality, not letting a book dictate their decisions.
December 14th, 2007
